Thursday, April 21, 2011

I am a very slow reader. I got this book (HarperCollins, Ha) several weeks ago, but I haven't read much of it. In the past, I would do whole book reviews on here, but in this case, I think I will chunk it out, and do reviews of sections of the book. It is derived from an edge.org project. They have about 150 2-4 page essays from prominent scientists and artists. The book is an edited version of the essays on the edge.org site. For example, Clay Shirky talks about the invisible college.

Concerning the old publishing and mass media system:

The beneficiaries of the system in which making things public was a privileged activity--academics, politicians, reporters, doctors--will compain about the way the new abundance of public thought upends the old order, but those complaints are like keening at a wake: The change they are protesting is already in the past. The real action is elsewhere. [Preprint of the essay is here.]